Posted
by
Soulskillon Sunday April 27, 2008 @09:17AM
from the time-to-come-clean dept.

Lucas123 writes "A District Court judge has ordered the Executive Office of the President to tell the court by May 5 whether any e-mail server backup tapes were kept for a period from March to October 2003 to cover controversial issues such as reasons for starting the war in Iraq, the release of a former CIA operative's name and the US Department of Justice's actions. The White House has been working for months trying to fend off a lawsuit filed last May in federal court in Washington by the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics. The judge cited what he called an apparent contradiction by White House CIO Theresa Payton as to whether backup tapes had been preserved. He also recommended that White House employees be ordered to turn over any flash drives or other portable media that may contain e-mails. The White House missing email scandal has been developing for some time now."

Keeping backup tapes for more than 2-3 years including housing all corporate email on worm drives has been a common practice at large companies for years now. Those practices obviously don't apply to the White House. Of course the CIO will likely take the fall, get fired and be rewarded with a post as the new CIO at Exxon.

It's the government! Do you really expect gov't to be efficient or do things correctly?

The Social Security has administration costs less than 10% of the average retirement fund. Yes, the government is 10 times better than private practice. Also, schools (when you exclude administration and things private schools don't do like transportation) are more efficient than private schools. The USPS will get my letter cross country for less than any other option. The organizations made by the government and falling under the government that are insulated from elections and such are quite efficient. It's when you have politicians involved that the government fails (elected school boards make problems, not solve them). If you could find a way to govern a democracy without elected officials messing it up, then you will have found the perfect government. But don't blame "government" for the problems that politicians make.

I know this has flaws; how do we keep everybody from peeking into the backups, for example. I'm sure the Legislative branch wouldn't want the Executive branch to be flipping through its emails, and vice-vice-versa for the other branches.

That's not a flaw, that's accountability. And why not have the GAO [wikipedia.org] do all the backups?

How can the Bush administration invade countries and kill innocent civilians (shock and awe) and not see it as terrorism?

Well, under international law, when you openly send the uniformed military of your country to attack another country, that is normally called an act of war (or possibly war crimes). It is not terrorism under anyone's definition (aside from a few radical wackos).

Terrorism is normally committed by sub-national elements. Al-Qaida is not a country. Neither is the PLO, the Red Army Faction, Hizbullah, Hamas, Tamil Tigers, Weather Underground or the IRA. There is some fuzziness between "rebels", "freedom fighters", "liberation movements" and "terrorists", but the uniformed military of a state are clearly not terrorists. Many Nazis were tried & convicted of war crimes, not terrorism.

What is the difference between a bunch of idiots crashing planes into buildings and another bunch of idiots sending bombers, fighters, tanks, and troops into a country to demolish their buildings and kill their people?

There is a very big difference between the uniformed military of a state carrying out government policy and a random bunch of individuals, even if both result in many deaths.

The sad reality is that companies like Blackwater have gone into Iraq and turn the cities into a shooting gallery. The troops, under the stress of IEDs, suicide bombers, etc, respond by also going on killing sprees.

War is Hell. That isn't new. Normally you go to war when the alternative is even worse. You can see "even worse" in Sudan, where the Sudanese government has killed over a million people in Darfur, and no major country has been willing to go to war to prevent it.

What is the difference and what gives the Bush administration the right to kill what has been estimated as between 80,000 to 90,000 innocent Iraqis? http://www.iraqbodycount.org/ [iraqbodycount.org]

There is a decent legal case to be made under international law that the UN Security Council's Iraq resolutions authorized the use of force to compel Saddam's regime to comply. Further, the US Constitution reserves the right to declare war to the Congress, and Congress authorized the President to use force in Iraq.

Of course, that doesn't change the fact that the Iraq conflict has been a mess after Saddam fell.

Bush, Cheney, Rove, Rumsfeld, Rice, et. al., have now killed over 4000 Americans and over 80,000 Iraqis in the name of fighting terror after 3000 Americans were killed on 9/11.

Bush et. al. didn't kill 4000 Americans, they sent their all-volunteer military into harm's way. The opposition killed 4000 American soldiers. Compared to most other armed conflicts, American casualties have been very light.

On the other hand, there haven't been any terrorist attacks in the USA since then. Of course, correlation & causation are different things...

Does that make sense? I don't think so. All they have done is given terrorists more reasons to attack.

That's debatable. The terrorists already hated the USA prior to the conflict in Iraq & Afghanistan. Osama bin Laden's main complaint was that Americans were in Saudi Arabia and contaminating the land by their presence. Of course, the Americans were there at the explicit invitation of the government of Saudi Arabia, and when the Saudis asked them to leave, they left.

First you start with manipulating the world stock market and you proceed with draining southeast Asia, including 88% Muslim populated Indonesia.you have put together a deal that requires investors to put in 1 billion just to get in and they have to stay in for 3 years.

Once you start having a very draining effect on the south east Asia economy and persistently ignore any effort of communication on those you are draining from and finally get a sign that you have drained them as much as you can via formula comming up wrong persistantly, and then offered them interest bearing loans thru the world bank whioch only pissed them off more.....and they make one attempt to take down the WTC but fail...

You have managed to set up the "loopy conspiracy"

Of course there are American investor losers in the deal too, such as enron worldcom and some califorina power company....etc...and this helps take suspicion off of your conspiracy motives. But you then buy the WTC with its asbestos sickness and insure it from terrorist attacks for way more then you are paying for it. And as you proceed to remove the deteriorating asbestos you also plant demolition explosives in the main shaft. As you know that there will be another attack, as the NSA has told you and its agreed upon to have the military not available during this inevitable attack. To of course let it happen.

Of course the SEC is investigating the dealing of this world stock market manipulation deal and ironically have the documentation under investigation in building seven. So the attack happens and damages some building worse than others but the worse continue to stand where the less damaged building seven was evacuated and intentionally taken down.

In summary and in full support of your "loopy conspiracy theory" It really was all about destroying some paperwork. And of course the paperwork had to first be created.So it wasn't about a trillion dollars or draining south east asia economically or even about indonesia being by CIA reports 88% Muslim, but all about distroying some paperwork. For the sake of creating a "loopy conspiracy"

But that doesn't explain why the pentagon was hit and what some think was also a target "The White house"

There is no way it could all be based upon human greed, simple human greed.

I suppose the anthrax was a much bigger conspiracy, as it certainly couldn't have been done by some one person with enough authority and knowledge to access the anthrax store without being questioned and do this themselves. One person doesn't qualify as a conspiracy, but any fool could easily guess how the political parties would respond to this. But that doesn't support conspiracy theories, certainly not your loopy one.

There is no way it could possible be a retaliation of a wrongful world stock market manipulation that would backed by politically controlled military where our own NSA knew enough to assist by not doing anything to circumvent it. Greed figures out how to make a profit in loss they know will happen.

That's a lie. Well, or maybe you were hoodwinked by liars to where you think that's the truth, but it isn't. They take in money, invest it, and pay out some. They take in more than they pay out. They have all the functions of a mutual fund, plus some, and function below the cost of a mutual fund. There is no shorfall in Social Security.

So how were the first Social Security recipients paid when the system was first started? They hadn't been paying into it since it hadn't existed when they were working. They were simply paid with the money put into it by the current workers at the time. Yes if you fudge with the accounting you can make it look like your payments are being invested, just like one can pretend everything is fine since your monthly income equals your monthly expenses, while ignoring all those credit card bills demanding payment on $20k outstanding debt. If you honestly believe the money you put into it is all being invested and sitting waiting for your retirement, I'm sorry but you're the one being hoodwinked.

The reality is that the bulk of the money goes to pay current recipients, and only the leftover invested (and prior to the government separating it from the general fund, it wasn't even invested, it was simply used for other purposes with an IOU left in its place). If it were all held and invested, it'd be impossible for it to go into a shortfall -- after all, the original money plus interest would still be there. The only reason it's set to become a problem is because it's mostly not invested, it's used to pay current recipients. And when the payments to recipients exceeds the receipts from current workers, the system starts to fall apart.

With a couple minor tweaks (very minor) SS could be made to be fully funded. It would take at least another generation or two, but making it fully funded is easy

The only way to fix it is for the government put in enough new money into it to offset all the people who got paid out of it without paying into it (complete and partial). At that point the system would have zero past debt and the money you put into it would be held for your retirement. Unless you do that, you're essentially shuffling $1000/mo into a savings account then immediately cashing out $900 of it to pay past debts, all so you can claim "I'm putting aside $1000/mo for retirement."

There are some issues with the random nature of death and uncertainty of duration of payout, but as you say those are tweaks. I don't have a problem with a socialized retirement net per se, but it's in no way comparable to a fully privatized personal retirement account in how it's administrated.

Maybe if our federal government would get its head out of its ass, we wouldn't have that problem. Does anyone care to tell me a legitimate reason why we still have military bases in France? I encourage other nations to dislike us, since it's probably the only thing that might eventually knock some sense into our government.